Of Lions and Lycans
by enchantedsleeper
Summary: Sirius decides to get a tattoo, and brings Remus along for the ride, but even in the Muggle world nothing is what it seems. Pointless, fluffy Marauders-era friendship fic. One-shot


**Author's Notes: **Well, this was unexpected. xD I came up with a random idea for a Marauders'-era fanfic, decided to write it, and a few days later had completed this random, sort of plotless one-shot. xD I know I was going to stop myself from working on new ideas and devote time to my old neglected chapter fics, but I've decided I'm allowed to write one-shots just to break things up. I'm sure you guys don't mind. X3

Fun fact: I was originally going to call this story _Pins and Needles_, which seemed like a cute name, but more appropriate for a humour fic than what this story turned out to be. Besides, there really are no pins involved xD

Oh yeah, and the Marauders are fifteen when this story takes place.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own any characters used in this fanfiction, all of whom are the property of the ineffable J.K. Rowling. Indigo Ink Body Art, to the best of my knowledge, is not a real tattoo parlour. I came up with the name off the top of my head, and any resemblance it might bear to an existing business (there is an Indigo Body Art somewhere in the world, according to Google) is pure coincidence.

* * *

><p><strong>Of Lions and Lycans<strong>

"Sirius, are you sure you've thought about this properly? In fact, are you sure you've thought about it at all?"

Sirius sighed in exasperation. "_Yes_, Moony, I have, and I didn't bring you along so you could act like my conscience." They emerged from the tube station and stood blinking in the sunlight on a busy London street. Sirius looked left and right along the street and then pulled a business card out to consult the miniature map on the back. The card read '**Indigo Ink Body Art**'.

"I think it's this way," he said, and set off.

"Why _did_ you bring me along?" Remus persisted, catching up to his long strides. "Why not bring James? Seems to me like he'd be far more supportive of this sort of thing. I'm sure he'd cheer you on, in fact. You had to know I wouldn't really be on board with the idea."

Sirius chewed his lip, looking down at the map again. "Prongs was busy."

"Unlikely. When he last owled me he said he had nothing going on for the next two weeks. He was pretty keen to meet up and do something, in fact. Now why don't you try the truth this time?"

Sirius glared at him, leading them down a side street. "That _was_ the truth. He had something come up. That's not impossible, is it?"

"No, but I can tell you're lying anyway."

Sirius chewed his lip again and sighed. "Prongs… isn't really the hand-holding type," he admitted.

Remus' eyebrows rose. "You brought me with you to hold your hand?"

"No!" Sirius shot him another annoyed glance. "It was a figure of speech. You know what I mean."

"You're afraid he'd laugh at you," Remus interpreted, deciding that one of them at least should stop dancing around the issue and say it plainly. "Or call you a girl. If you screamed."

"Something like that," Sirius muttered. "Number 44… Saffron Way…" He squinted at the nearest building to see what number they were up to. "Why don't they have numbers on every building?"

"You know, I don't think he would, though," Remus mused, thinking back to James's serious, attentive face when he'd admitted to a lingering fear of the dark: partly from his childhood, but mostly because he couldn't help thinking of the next full moon, counting down the days and remembering a time when things hadn't been so easy, when he hadn't had four friends to run alongside him in the dark and keep him company.

"I mean if anything, it sounds more like the sort of thing _you_ would do to _him_," he continued to ponder. "Which may be the reason why he always…"

He trailed off as he noticed that Sirius had come to a halt and was staring fixedly at a building across the road, a grimly determined expression on his face. Remus gave the front a once-over. To his relief, it didn't look as seedy and derelict as he had feared. It would have been an ordinary brick building except for the fact that the brick was decorated with fantastic designs: skulls surrounded by curling neon flames, leaping tigers with their mouths open in mid-roar, hearts pierced by arrows and swirling Celtic designs and roses and butterflies in the most bizarre mix of the whimsical, the mythical and the terrifying. A Chinese dragon with lurid green scales wound its way along the bottom. Remus wondered whether all of these pictures were available as tattoo designs. The art certainly looked good, but all the same…

"Why did it have to be a Muggle tattoo parlour?" he asked. "Much as I hate going down Knockturn Alley, I hear the guy there knows his stuff. Non-magical tattoos don't move, they hurt a _lot_, and you have to wear a bandage instead of using a simple healing spell on it. Why put yourself through this?"

"It'll piss them off more," Sirius said shortly, crossing the street. Remus stared after him with sad eyes. He didn't need to ask who Sirius meant. He knew that Sirius was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to annoy his devoutly pureblood, anti-Muggle family, but this seemed unnecessary. Still, they'd come all this way and it didn't seem like he was going to talk Sirius out of it now. With a sigh, he followed his friend across the street and into Indigo Ink Body Art.

The parlour was roomy, with an ordinary black-and-white checked floor, but the walls were jam packed with designs of every possible sort, some of which made the decoration on the outside of the building look mundane by comparison. Both boys stared around in wonder. Sirius relaxed as he took in the fantastic designs, imagining them patterned across his skin. A picture of a flaming motorcycle caught his eye and he prodded Remus excitedly. "Maybe I should get that one!"

"I thought you were going to go for a lion," Remus reminded him.

"Yeah, okay. Or I could get a lion riding a motorbike!"

Remus snorted with laughter. "Now _that_'s going overboard. Stick to something simple. How about that one?" He pointed to a snarling lion's head. "Or the one next to it?" To the right was a blocky black lion, gothic and striking.

Sirius considered them both, but shook his head. "I want a full lion, not just a head, and that one doesn't really look Gryffindor-ish…" He scrutinised a collection of big cats, tigers and panthers and lynxes and leopards, looking for the right design. His eyes wandered over to the next set of pictures, and suddenly he tugged on his friend's sleeve, pointing at something. "Moony, look!"

Remus followed his finger and saw a beautiful picture of a wolf, howling up at a full moon. He shivered, his skin prickling as if in sympathy with it, wanting to become the werewolf there and then. "A wolf, that's pretty cool. Brilliant design. I don't really think I would get a tattoo, though."

"Are you sure that _is_ a wolf?" Sirius said, moving closer to the wall and examining the picture. "The shape of the snout… and the tail is tufted… Too bad the eyes are closed, but Moony, it looks like a werewolf to me! Come and look!"

Reluctantly, Remus walked over and stood looking up at the picture. "I dunno, Padfoot, I think you're imagining it," he said, unconsciously using his friend's Animagus nickname for the first time that day, thinking back to transformations and the full moon and running under the stars. "It's too small to really tell. Besides, the only person who could have designed a tattoo like that-"

"-is a wizard," Sirius finished for him. "Maybe even a werewolf."

Remus shivered again. He wanted to stop looking at the picture, but at the same time, he couldn't take his eyes off it. Of course, there was no way on earth he was going to get a _tattoo_ – aside from anything else, his parents would kill him. But he was drawn to the image of the howling wolf – or werewolf – and the idea that a wizard might have designed this picture for a Muggle tattoo parlour… But why?

"Can I 'elp ya?"

The two boys jumped and turned to see a young woman standing behind them, looking bored. She had black hair with green streaks tied back in a ponytail, and her bare arms were covered in bright tattoos. Sirius smiled at her, and her cheeks tinted pink, but her deadpan expression didn't waver.

"Yes," said Remus. "We were looking for-" But just then Sirius seized his arm, staring at something on the opposite wall.

"_Moony!_ Moony, I've found it!"

"Found what?" asked Remus, as the girl raised an eyebrow at the odd nickname.

"_The perfect design!_" Sirius was almost beside himself as he turned Remus' shoulders to face the right way and pointed. "There, right there, in the middle! A lion, pouncing on a snake! It's too brilliant for words!"

Remus smiled slightly. The tattoo was rendered in black and featured a male lion pinning down a snake with one paw, his other raised to claw at it, mouth open ready for the kill. "It is a good design. Do you think it'd fit on your arm?"

"Yeah, just about."

"And you're sure it's not overkill? With the snake and everything? I can only imagine how your parents will take to _that_."

Sirius ignored him and addressed the woman. "I want that one," he said firmly.

The girl went over to the counter and opened a large diary. "You go' an appoin'ment?" she asked.

"Yeah, name's Sirius Black," Sirius replied, following her to the counter.

Remus raised his eyebrows. "You _have_ thought this through."

"Told you," Sirius replied.

The girl jerked her thumb towards the back of the parlour, where they saw two doors leading off, presumably, to individual rooms where the tattoos were actually done. "I fink Dan's free. Righ'-'and door." She heaved an enormous ringbinder onto the counter with a 'thud' and began expertly flipping through it. A couple of seconds later she had extracted Sirius' design from inside a plastic pocket. "Give 'im this," she said, and held it out.

Sirius took the picture and grinned. "Come on, Moony." He led the way to the back of the shop and knocked on the door.

"Yes," said a gruff voice from inside.

Sirius pushed the door open and they edged their way into the small, jam-packed workroom. It was crammed with a jumble of colour caps, needles, balls of cotton wool, bottles of alcohol and steriliser, piles of duplicating paper and tattoo designs… Equipment spilled from every available surface, but the room was dominated by the large, imposing machine in its centre. Sirius eyed the needles with apprehension. Sitting on a stool next to the machine was a well-built man in a dirty white vest, with dark curly hair and an eyebrow piercing. Surprisingly, unlike the woman at the counter, the man only had one tattoo: a phoenix on his bicep, lovingly rendered in brilliant colour and delicate detail, at odds with his rough exterior.

"Design," Dan said, holding out a hand. Sirius gave him the lion picture; Dan looked it over and smirked.

"All right then. Where're you having it?"

"On here," Sirius said, pushing up his T-shirt sleeve and indicating his right bicep.

Dan nodded and pulled another stool out from where it had been lurking, concealed, under a workbench. "Take a seat, then. You might wanna roll that sleeve up tightly." As Sirius did so, he swept some papers aside and cleared a space on a workbench, pulling a sheet of tracing paper towards him and beginning to trace the design with a black pen. Remus stood awkwardly by the door, looking on. He wanted to move closer, but didn't want to get in the way. He occupied himself by staring around at the walls, hands in the pockets of his long coat.

"All done," said Dan some moments later. "Now for the fun part, then." He poured some alcohol onto a cotton ball and wiped Sirius' arm with it. Sirius watched with fascination.

"Is that some kind of a cleaning p- uh, cleaning solution?" Sirius barely managed to keep himself from uttering a distinctly magical word. Remus felt the urge to slap a palm to his forehead. Instead he shot Sirius a warning glare.

"Yes, this is for cleaning your arm," said Dan, who sounded slightly amused at the obvious question. He stuck the design down, rubbed it, and removed the duplicating paper to leave an impression of it behind. "Like magic," he said. "Now to do a bit of hocus pocus with these needles and some ink." He pulled on rubber gloves and began bunching and angling the needles on the machine.

"So… Those really go into my skin?" said Sirius, who was a little pale.

"Yes, they go into your skin, and yes, they will cause you actual pain. Quite a lot if you're a first-timer," said Dan. Then he muttered something that sounded unnervingly like, "_Wizards_," but only Sirius noticed, because Remus' gaze had been arrested by a painting on the far wall.

It was the howling wolf, or werewolf, and now that he saw it in its full size (about as big as an A3 piece of paper), he felt sure that it really was a werewolf after all. The snout and the tail were much more obvious, more deliberate, and there was a silver sheen to its fur that didn't come entirely from the moonlight. It was a fully-grown wolf, big and powerful, the likes of which Remus might one day transform into, though the thought disgusted him. He had always been on the scrawny side, anyway.

Dan was rubbing Vaseline over Sirius' skin, about to start the procedure.

"Did you paint this?" Remus asked, pointing at the wolf on the far wall. Dan glanced briefly at the painting and then said to Sirius,

"Here we go, then. Brace yourself."

Sirius gritted his teeth as the machine began to whir, fists clenching tightly on his knees. Remus gave him an encouraging smile, though part of his mind was still whirling, wondering about the painting on the wall. The full version was richly detailed in a way that a tattoo could never be, and gave off a feeling of having been painted from real life (albeit with some artistic license, since most werewolves weren't in the habit of posing poetically against a starry midnight backdrop, howling forlornly at the moon).

Sirius was pale and sweating, trembling with the effort of not crying out as the tattoo slowly took shape on his arm. Dan shook his head at the sight of him.

"You can scream if you want, the room's pretty soundproof," he said.

"I'm… fine…" Sirius managed. "Agh…" When he raised an arm to wipe at the sweat on his forehead, Remus saw deep purple nail marks in his palm. Remus shook his head, catching Dan's eye for a split second as he glanced up from his work. Dan smiled.

It seemed like a very long time before the tattoo on Sirius' arm was finally complete. It took Remus a few seconds to realise that the buzzing of the machine had stopped, the sound still ringing in his ears. Sirius looked up at Dan, who nodded.

"You're all done," he said. "Take a look before the bandages go on."

Sirius twisted his arm round to look at the tattoo, grinning broadly.

"Awesome," he said. "What d'you think, Moony?"

Remus smiled and nodded. "Pretty cool," he agreed.

Dan got up and went over to one of the workbenches, where he unearthed a circular mirror and held it up. Sirius stood in front of the mirror, flexing his bicep and admiring the bad-boy look of the tattoo. Then he reluctantly allowed his arm to be bandaged, watching the design disappear beneath swathes of white.

Finally it was done, and Remus realised that if he wanted to find out about the painting, it was now or never. Cutting across Sirius' question about payment, he said,

"I know you didn't want to answer me before, but please… Who painted that picture?"

Dan sighed, breaking needles off the machine and sterilising them. After a long moment he replied,

"I did."

Remus nodded, having more or less expected that response.

"It looks… like it was drawn from life," he said tentatively. Sirius was watching him intently.

Dan assessed them both with his eyes; he appeared to be debating whether or not he could trust them with the information.

"Yes, it is," he said at last. "It's a painting of my father."

Both Sirius' and Remus' eyes widened; Sirius' mouth even fell open in shock. They had both had their suspicions, but all the same… Here in a Muggle tattoo parlour in the middle of Camden, it seemed unreal.

"But then… that means you're a…" began Sirius.

"A Squib," Dan finished with a note of defiance in his voice. But Remus barely even registered this revelation.

"So your father… he had children," he said hoarsely. "And are you… are you a… I mean, do you…?"

Dan looked at Remus, taking in his too-long brown hair (it grew faster than that of normal wizards; his mother could barely keep up with it), the scars on his face and hands, the shadows under his eyes and the way his clothes hung off his thin frame.

"No, I'm not," he said softly.

Remus was shaking. Sirius walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Thanks for the tattoo, man. Here." He gave Dan a muggle ten-pound note. "It's a tip."

Dan accepted the money with a wry smile. "I'd refuse it politely, but I don't suppose you'll have much use for it otherwise. Thanks. Take care, both of you."

They left the room and Sirius went to the counter to pay. The girl was on the phone, but somehow still managed to take Sirius' payment and give him the correct change, all while holding up her end of the conversation. As they turned to leave, Remus heard her frantically leafing through the big ring-binder, and then,

"Oi! 'Scuse me!"

They turned to see the girl emerging from behind the counter, handset muffled against her chest. She was holding out a piece of paper, her eyes on Remus.

"This is for you," she said. Remus took it. It was a picture – a copy of the werewolf tattoo design. "Keep it."

Remus looked at it and wondered if anyone in this place was as they seemed.

* * *

><p><strong>Epilogue<strong>

Sirius' bandages came off his arm a day later, and he showed off the design when they met up for sundaes at Fortescue's in Diagon Alley. Peter gaped at the lion tattoo in utter admiration, and even James looked impressed.

"Nice choice of design," he said. "I bet your parents loved _that_ one."

Sirius shrugged diffidently. "My mother shrieked and raged and threatened me with the usual disownment. She'd better be careful, or one of these days I'll take her up on it." He grinned and ate another spoonful of his sundae. "Then she confined me to my room, as if I'd want to be anywhere else in that disgusting house."

"And then I suppose you flew out of the window to get here?" said Remus.

"Yup."

"Wow!" Peter had hardly eaten any of his ice cream, too busy hanging on his friends' every word.

Remus shook his head. James chuckled.

"Maybe I'll go there and get one of a Silver Arrow," he said.

"A broom? Typical," said Sirius.

"Says the guy who considered getting one of a motorbike," Remus reminded him. James laughed out loud.

"Didn't fancy getting one yourself then, Moony?" he asked.

Sirius caught Remus' eye briefly and looked away again, smiling slightly. He hadn't told the other two anything about Remus' strange connection with Dan the tattoo artist, and Remus had likewise said nothing which implied that Sirius had been anything other than stoic and impassive during the whole procedure, in spite of James' repeated teasing hints and leading questions. It probably wouldn't have hurt to tell, but the other's silence meant a lot to both of them.

"Maybe next time," said Remus with a smile.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>Sorry for the slightly odd ending xD I didn't want my epilogue to drag on for too long.

I noticed while writing this that Peter's is the only name, out of the four Marauders, which doesn't end in S. CLEARLY THIS IS A SIGN. HE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BETRAY THEM!


End file.
